Donald Trump's newly celebrated 'pivot' to becoming a 'maturity' as a Presidential candidate, as declared by some Republicans and some in the corporate media, may be far less of a 'pivot' than he and his surrogates are pretending, especially in his new attempts to woo African-American voters.

On today's BradCast [audio link posted below.], we take a look at some of the claims of Trump's surrogates, and how they stack up against reality. (Hint: Taking out a newspaper ad calling for the death penalty for five African-American kids found completely innocent of a horrible crime doesn't seem a particularly smart way to woo the African-American vote.)

Similarly, if the GOP wants to reach out to minority voters, they have a very peculiar way of showing it, as Republican Party officials, operatives and Governors --- from CA to NC, from NJ to MI --- re-double their efforts to keep 'certain' voters from being able to cast a vote at all this November.

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On today's BradCast: Day One of Donald Trump's Republican National Convention in Cleveland was insane. But it was all going well enough until it became apparent late on Monday night that portions of Melania Trump's headliner speech was plagiarized directly from Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention speech.

Incredibly, the man who made 'You're fired!' a catch phrase can't seem to muster up the ability to hold anyone in his own campaign accountable for it. As such, the oratorical fraud and, more importantly, how its being handled (and denied) by Team Trump, offers a stark warning to voters as to how a Trump Presidency might handle the actual serious issues and difficult decisions that need to be made.

Or, at least, it should.

Speaking of warnings, new national polling remains tight between Trump and Hillary Clinton, who continues losing ground in several of them. That, as several new cases and disturbing allegations of voter registration fraud by Republican election insiders in a number of states, along with some very troubling news from the U.S. Dept. of Justice concerning their plans to no longer send observers to polling places in certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination, should serve as yet another stark warning for American voters...

While we post The BradCast here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they're available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or our native RSS feed!

We've described Dunmore, over and again throughout the years, as "an unmitigated disaster" and "among the worst Registrars in the nation". And now she's finally been put out of the misery of the voters of Riverside, the first county in the nation to go to 100% touch-screen voting in 2000.

The $30 million bust of an investment into unsecure, oft-failed, easily manipulated, completely unverifiable touch-screen systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems was carried out by her predecessor Mischelle Townsend (who would famously say, on camera nonetheless, "Electronic touch-screen ballots are 100% accurate. We've not seen a single example in which their accuracy can be disputed."), but Dunmore succeeded over the years in doubling-down on Townsend's horrible decisions and consistently anti-voter policies....

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Phillips' landmark ruling was widely cheered by gay rights organizations that credited her with getting accomplished what President Obama and Washington politics could not.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have 60 days to appeal. Legal experts say they are under no legal obligation to do so and could let Phillips' ruling stand.

The order follows a successful lawsuit by the Log Cabin Republicans in which Judge Phillips found the military's policy --- which President Obama has chosen not to end with an executive order as he could have --- to be unconstitutional on First Amendment free speech grounds and a violation of the due process rights of gay and lesbian service members.

As we noted recently, while it often takes far too long in this nation, the good news is that, eventually, Constitutional rights win and the haters lose. Today's ruling underscores that hopeful point --- in an otherwise dark period in this nation's history --- once again.

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UPDATE 4:08pm PT: 21 Democratic U.S. Senators have sent a letter to the Obama Administration asking them to not appeal Judge Phillips' order. There are no GOP Senators signed on to the letter despite the fact that it was a GOP group who won the decision in court. While, to be fair, we also don't know if the Dem Senators asked the Republicans to sign or not, the fact that all of them voted against a repeal of DADT (if it were to be approved by the U.S. military) in the recent Defense Authorization bill suggests that it's likely none of the Republican Senators would have done so anyway. The letter from the Democratic Senators is now posted here....

UPDATE 10/15/10: Confusion reigns. Incredibly, the DoJ is asking the Judge to stay the order pending appeal after all. (Which part of "Unconstitutional" do you not understand, Mr. President?!) Of course, in truth, the decision is the DoJ's, not the President's directly. The Pentagon, earlier this week, has said for the moment they will not be enforcing DADT, though later in the week they told folks to not come out yet! Apparently. As mentioned, confusion reigns. Details on the appeal here. Memo from the Pentagon here.

Following public records requests in Riverside County, CA, the Election Defense Alliance has received a public copy of code used to program a recent election on an e-voting system made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc.

The result is a first-of-its kind public examination of such code, as now underway on a wiki page called the "Sequoia Voting System Study Project" which was created by the group this week.

"For the first time ever, the internal guts of a modern voting system will be publicly examined in a collaborative, open fashion," the page explains before explaining that the code, prior to being released, was first given to Sequoia by Riverside County to strip out whatever they regarded as proprietary information.

"As near as we can tell," the wiki page notes, "instead of stripping out proprietary stuff of any sort, Sequoia simply committed vandalism: they stripped the Microsoft SQL header data off the top, expecting that this would ruin access to the data under any possible database utility, making the contents unreadable."

But according to project participant Jim March --- a long time citizen e-voting watchdog and inveterate software geek --- Sequoia didn't succeed...

With the entire state of California facing a massive budget crisis, and most, if not all, of its counties facing shortfalls this year, Riverside County's Registrar of Voters, Barbara Dunmore, is refusing to collect at least $160,000 from Sequoia Voting Systems for the cost of manually counting paper trails produced by their touch-screen voting systems last November.

California counties which choose to use touch-screen voting systems to serve disabled voters are required to tally all of the so-called "paper trails" by hand after elections, as per requirements for their use as imposed by Sec. of State Debra Bowen in 2007, due to security concerns with such systems.

The cost for that tally is to be covered by the voting machine company, as per Bowen's certification documents, which state: "Elections officials are required to conduct the audits, and the vendor is required to reimburse the jurisdiction."

Nonetheless, Dunmore, who has an extraordinary history of failure during her tenure as Registrar, in both the distant and recent past, has failed to seek reimbursement. And her office now seems to now be fighting, on behalf of Sequoia, to keep the beleaguered e-voting supplier from having to pay the costs, despite clear terms of use for such systems in this state...

We know what the excuse is in MN, but what's the excuse in Riverside County, CA?

Seems there is none, other than County Registrar Barbara Dunmore's hope to ensure the county remains one of the absolute worst places to cast a vote in the entire nation (and there's some stiff competition there!)

Though Dunmore certified the results of last November's election on Dec. 2 as "full, true and correct" --- 28 days after the election, as per state law --- it turns out she's still counting votes, months after the election. In secret...

After virtually ignoring the issue for some six straight years, our hometown newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, has run a two-part, 2,800-word "series" on concerns about voting machines, right on schedule, just in time to do absolutely no good at all before next week's upcoming Tsunami Tuesday election in the state. Waytago, LATimes!

The series reports absolutely nothing that has not already been reported over the last several years here at The BRAD BLOG, which is why the LATimes folks makes the big bucks and we don't.

They do, however, include an important point at the very end of the second article, in quoting from one of the country's most notable long-time voting machine apologists, Kimball Brace...

Riverside County, CA --- under the continuingly incompetent direction of Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore, and the extraordinary delinquency of its County Board of Supervisors --- continues its never-ending fight to be named top dog as the Worst Place to Vote in America.

There's a lot of competition out there for that title, but the county performed above and beyond the call of duty over the past several years in that race, and in its quest for disastrousness. Today's news certainly helps the county stay right up near the top of the pack. Waytago, Riverside!...

No time for the moment (particularly as we remain a bit under the weather) to recap the long and storied history of the national embarrassment that elections in Riverside County, California, have become. So for today, we'll just share links with you to two of the county's latest missteps.

Both of the latest boners were overseen --- yet again --- by Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore. The poor woman is clearly in way over her head and should --- as the former managing editor of the Press-Enterprisecalled for just over a week ago --- resign immediately. Or be fired. For the good of everyone.

Here's Dunmore last week inventing an ingeniously obnoxious scheme to raise $6.40 (yes, that number is no typo) for the county.

Here's Dunmore today, making ink yet again (almost literally), admitting that she screwed up --- again --- this time on the absentee ballots just sent out to her voters.

And here's hoping the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, no great geniuses themselves, finally realize it's time to find someone whose actually up to the job.

We shouldn't be too harsh, perhaps. After all, Dunmore took the job over from predecessor Mischelle Townsend, infamous for overseeing Riverside's ignominious place as the first county in the nation to go all touch-screen DRE. A $30 million disaster, that. But even more endearingly, Townsend once let fly with one of the greatest e-voting quotes of all time, during an interview with the filmmakers of HBO's Hacking Democracy (as seen on the DVD bonus footage).

Said Townsend with a straight face (but you should try not to laugh too hard): "Electronic touch-screen ballots are 100% accurate. We've not seen a single example in which their accuracy can be disputed."

Good luck, Riverside! Looks like you're gonna be needing it for quite a while at this rate!

KTLA News reports on the rush to prepare paper ballots for upcoming elections, including next February's California presidential primary now that Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified electronic voting in 29 counties because the machines proved vulnerable to hackers.

The piece also features Riverside County election integrity activist (and hero) Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE who raises concerns about Sequoia's role in counting the paper ballots, "when these ballots go into electronic tabulating machines there is no way to tell whether or not they have been programmed to flip the vote and rig the election." While Registrar of Voters, Barbara Dunmore, agrees with Courbat about the vulnerability of electronic machines, she believes election officials have put in place safeguards that will ensure fair elections.

For more on Courbat's tireless efforts to protect democracy in Riverside County see this video mashup.

Considering Riverside County, CA, was the first in the nation to purchase Sequoia Voting Systems' malfunctioning, unsecure touch-screen voting machines for county-wide use in 2000, and that the county's Board of Supervisors were once the most ardent supporters of the company --- one of the Supes even going so far as to foolishly bet "1000 to 1" that the system couldn't be hacked --- the latest news from Riverside, no doubt, comes as a very bitter pill for the failing voting machine company.

And better still, the county now has a golden opportunity to restore its reputation by leading the nation in bringing accountability to the real villains in this regrettable saga.

The Board refused to authorize $500,000 for uncertified Sequoia optical scan voting machines, as recommended by the county's Sequoia-lovin' Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore, in order to replace their recently decertified Sequoia touch-screen systems which had previously been purchased (twice!) for some $27 million.

"I will not vote for another dime to go to Sequoia," said Supervisor Roy Wilson, finally catching on, according to the report from KESQ....

I know it seems difficult to believe, but the first sign we've yet to be able to find publicly of a public official finally considering holding a voting machine company accountable for years of fraud and lying about their equipment, may come out of --- of all places --- Riverside County, CA!

Buried at the bottom of a report in yesterday's Press-Enterprise there is an interesting indication that County Supervisor Bob Buster, one of the most ardent supporters, previously, of touch-screen voting systems made by Sequoia, may be coming around to face reality, and may even be preparing to hold the company accountable for some of the millions of wasted county tax dollars...

ED NOTE: Courbat and his band of intrepid Election Integrity advocates are owed a huge debt of thanks and enormous congratulations for their effort. This recommendation, and indeed the creation of the "Blue Ribbon" commission itself, only came about due to the dogged, week-in, week-out, year-in, year-out persistence of Tom and the Riverside County advocates of SAVE R VOTE. We're happy to run his first-hand, guest blog contribution on this tremendous victory, as Courbat's group and efforts serve as a role model for citizens in every county in the nation. --- BF

Dump the DREs and Minimize Additional Outlays To Go To Paper Ballots

Next Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the Riverside County, California Board of Supervisors’ hand-picked “Blue Ribbon” Elections Review Committee will present the Board with recommendations to “Move as quickly as possible to a hybrid voting system…on paper ballots…counted by optical scanners.”

For Riverside County, the first in America to move to touch-screen electronic voting systems, the importance of their findings cannot be overstated.

With the exception of omitting the words “Digital Imaging” from the term “optical scanners” (aka “DIOS”), this is exactly the recommendation made to the committee by Finnish Computer Voting expert Harri Hursti to the Elections Review Committee in Palm Desert, CA, on March 30th of this year. Hursti came to Riverside after Supervisor Jeff Stone laid down a "1000 to 1" challenge, as covered in detail by The BRAD BLOG, that we'd be unable to manipulate the county's Sequoia touch-screen voting system. Hursti was happy to take up the challenge, but Stone demurred.

(It should also be noted that Stone and the Board of Supervisors failed to respond to requests to allow Mr. Hursti to address them and answer any questions they might have --- even after he flew 17 hours to testify before them and the "Blue Ribbon" committee.)

The committee's findings also match the recommendations made by SAVE R VOTE (Secure Accurate Verifiable Elections Require Voter Observation of Touchscreen Equipment) to both the "Blue Ribbon" Elections Review Committee (ERC) and the Board Of Supervisors (BoS) earlier this year.

The ERC reports that “…factors should minimize the additional capital outlay necessary to transition to a hybrid system.” The question now becomes: will the BoS reject the recommendations of their own hand-picked committee, who spent thousands of hours laboring over evidence contained in reports, interviews, presentations by expert witnesses, City Clerks, citizens' opinions, news articles, DVDs, conference calls, and SAVE R VOTE members? The full report can be found here.

Who Is On the Elections Review Committee (ERC)?

The "blue ribbon" ERC committee, again, hand-picked by the BoS, consists of a former County Supervisor, Kay Ceniceros; two former judges, Rob Taylor and Jim Ward; retired Press Enterprise newspaper editor and publisher Marcia McQuern; and an independent businesswoman who also serves as the president of a local chamber of commerce, Lynn Baldi. On April 24, Rob Taylor told the BoS in an interim report that, due to such a diversity of opinion, the committee might be submitting “five minority reports.” By July 11th, however, the entire committee issued a unanimous series of 17 recommendations.